Dem Richard Cordray pledges a governor run 'the Ohio way'

Former consumer watchdog Richard Cordray says he will focus on 'kitchen table issues' like the costs of health care and college.

Marty Schladen The Columbus Dispatch @martyschladen

GROVE CITY After watching the Ohio gubernatorial campaign from afar for months, Richard Cordray jumped into the race Tuesday and immediately rolled out the big guns.

The former director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a video featuring former President Barack Obama that Cordray said he was using with Obama’s permission. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren also appears in the video; both are past statements lauding Cordray’s service with the consumer agency.

And Cordray strongly implied that he is the national Democratic Party’s choice to try to win the Ohio Statehouse in 2018 — which could be shaping up as a wave election for Democrats.

“We’re going to be getting a lot of help nationally,” Cordray, 58, said to a crowd that packed Lilliy’s Kitchen Table in Grove City, his hometown.

It was the start of what Cordray is calling a “kitchen table” campaign across the state in which in intends to focus on the causes on Ohioans’ economic insecurity.

“As governor, I’ll focus on the kitchen-table issues that keep people up at night,” he said, listing health-care costs and consumer debt among them.

Cordray said he has spent the past 15 years on such issues — the past six running the bureau, which has gone after large financial institutions and payday lenders and returned almost $12 billion to consumers.

In a Democratic debate Monday, the four candidates already in the race criticized Cordray for abandoning his federal post.

In a statement on Tuesday one of them, former state Rep. Connie Pillich of Montgomery, reiterated the criticism.

“In the military, I learned that having a clear chain of command for all matters, including succession, is key,” Pillich, an Air Force veteran, said in a statement. “A good leader doesn’t abandon her post or leave her people without direction. But that’s exactly what Richard Cordray did when he turned over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to Donald Trump.”

Cordray said he had only months to run in his term as director and, with Trump choosing his successor, “there was always going to be a power struggle” over the agency’s future.

Cordray said that among his priorities as governor would be making local governments whole.

“Here in Ohio we’ve seen the state legislature wage relentless war against local government,” he said. “We need to put a stop to that.”

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, another Democratic candidate, also has been decrying cuts in local-government funds. In a statement on Cordray’s entrance to the race, she highlighted other accomplishments.

“My campaign has been presenting Ohio Democrats with a clear choice this election, one that combines executive experience with a record of accomplishment, including universal pre-K for every four-year-old in Dayton, job creation and holding the big pharmaceutical companies accountable for the opioid crisis,” she said. “As other candidates join the debate, we look forward to voters comparing our record and making a choice for Ohio’s future.”

Former U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton of Copley also issued a statement, but she didn’t mention Cordray even obliquely.

“Ohio deserves a governor who will be a champion for middle class and working families because they need opportunities to succeed, and that’s what I have done and fought for my entire career,” she said. “I’ve earned a reputation for fighting for Ohio workers and jobs, sponsoring the program that protected sixty thousand auto industry jobs and working with President Obama to pass the Affordable Care Act to make good health care affordable.”

Ohio Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman didn’t release a statement Tuesday, but has said he’ll continue his campaign regardless of what Cordray does. He had described Cordray as far from a fresh face.

Cordray declined to discuss Ohio Supreme Court Justice William M. O’Neill, a Democrat who said he’d seek the governorship unless Cordray got in the race. Lately O’Neill has been backing away, saying he first wants Cordray to agree with him on marijuana legalization and reopening shuttered state mental hospitals to treat opioid addicts before he abandons his plans.

On the Republican side, the perceived frontrunners are Attorney General Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted, who is running with DeWine as a candidate for lieutenant governor.

A Cordray-DeWine matchup next November would be a rematch of the race for attorney general in 2010. DeWine narrowly won that one by 1.3 percent in a Republican wave election.

“If that’s the matchup, there will be respect on both sides,” Cordray said. “Mike and I respect each other very much.”